Marta Lança

This lecture-performance is a journey through an olive grove of different colours and intensities. It began taking shape in my head as I sought quality of life -- that is, air and space -- to raise a child. On a property without any irrigation, wild flowers sprout on either side of the low stone wall. Ourique, the self-proclaimed capital of the Iberian black pig, with many cuts of meat and layers of life to explore.

On the road there, I see rows of white pickets, in the style of an American cemetery. Some months later, there are sub-olive trees, atrophied in size and crown, precociously produced with the help of herbicide and agrochemicals. I roll up the car window to keep out the pestilent olive fumes. I imagine the particles of pollution in the smoke and in the water lines, on our clothes, on the walls, in our lungs. Standing against the contaminated air and crumbling time, the resilience of the olive tree, guardian of prophetic languages and of the Mediterranean. I seek to weave together familiarity, traces, and strangeness, in a land where people have fought against poverty, drought, depopulation, and exploitation for centuries.

Marta Lança

This performance is part of the Terra Batida project. Marta Lança participated in various residencies in Alentejo and Ílhavo. This performance was developed, in part, in a residency in Ouriqe that dealt with superintensive agricultural practices. Terra Batida is a constellation of people, practices and knowledge taking a stand against ecological violence and politics of abandonment. Local knowledge of socio-environmental conflicts combined with an active network create a context for resistance to extractive abuses and, also, for practices of care — speculation, fabulation, and building visions and reflections of the future for our weary, worn-out worlds.All Terra Batida events at the Alkantara Festival have free admission.

By and with Marta Lança Photo essay Maria Mire Sound design Nuno Mourão Translated by Marta Prino Peres

Superintensiva is presented in a double bill with Rasante by Joana Levi

Marta Lança (Lisbon, 1976) is a doctoral candidate in Artistic Studies at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her research interests include the postcolonial debate, cultural programming, memorialisation, platforms for discourse, and African Studies. She is the editor of the website BUALA and writes for publications in Portugal, Angola, and Brazil. She has translated works by Maxence Fermine, Jacques-Pierre Amettea, Asger Jorn, and Achille Mbembe. She has taught at Universidade Agostinho Neto, in Luanda. She has curated meetings, public programmes, and cycles at museums, art institutions, and festivals in Portugal and São Tomé e Príncipe. She has experience in cinema (research, production, scriptwriting, acting).

Maria Mire (Maputo, 1979) is a visual artist. She works collaboratively with various artistic collectives. Her artistic work and research centres on the perception of moving images. She directed Parto sem Dor, based on the figure of the obstetrician Cesina Bermudes. She is currently co-director of the Film/Moving Images Department at Ar.Co in Lisbon. She holds a PhD in Art and Design from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Porto.